What he means, but phases poorly, is to use compounds. On your other point, at least German is very specific with how compounds work grammatically, namely that

What he means, but phases poorly, is to use compounds. On your other point, at least German is very specific with how compounds work grammatically, namely that they follow a head-right principle which defines genus and declination and which essentially relegates everything left of the head to the status of further defining the head. Additionally, none of your examples work in German for the term "Krankenhaus" (sick house/hospital) for that very reason: a sick house (a house in disrepair) would have to be a krankes Haus following general rules of declension, which would also be the grammatically correct (though completely non-idiomatic) version for a fallen noble house. And while there is a very specific way that defines how stems of a compound are related, German can mark grammatical units differently from English (and akin to Latin) by requiring the agreement of case/numerus/genus between say an adjective and a noun, specifically making it grammatically impossible for krankes Haus to be understood as hospital or Krankenhaus to be understood as a dilapidated house. edit: the above holds true for Norwegian and Danish as well, by the way.